Hand Comments - First Request!

therealzuppy

Live MTT. $50 buy-in starting with 75 players. 5k starting stack, 30 min blinds. There are 16 players left, I'm on the bb for 800. A guy that I've been playing with for most of the tournament, who has been pretty tight, raises to 1600 from 2 seats from the button. I have 9 10. I hate folding to a min raise on my bb so I call. We both have just over 10k behind.

Flop come J 9 x, no flush draw.

I thought for a while about leading at the pot but decided to check.

He bet 1500 which I considered a weak bet, thinking he might've been phased by me thinking for a while before acting. I did think I was ahead here.

I raised to 4k.

He popped me, I have 4k behind so I call.

Questions...

1. Should I call preflop?
2. Should I lead the flop, checkraise as above or reraise all in or fold?
3. Any other comment?


Spoiler:
He turned over QK and said he had an openender (which he didn't, he'd misread his hand) but caught the 10 on the turn.

I'm just wondering how I played this.

This game was in Sydney in a new place called Pokerdome which is the only decent place for tourneys here. God bless it.

cooker3

I think considering the blinds that calling is worst play. It means you have nearly 20% of your stack invested.

I would much prefer shoving it, if he is tight as you say then chances are he folds quite a lot of hands and the min raise on button just shouts out weakness.
Folding seems ok as well.

As played if you think you were ahead then I would say you c/r him all in or maybe even just open shoving but if your going to going to go all in anyway then making it just 4000 is pointless, might as well just shove it in.

I would call his re-raise, pot is too big now and your too short to fold.

Hectorjelly

you played it fine and got unlucky. Calling preflop is fine.

Goodluck2me

cooker3 wrote:

I would much prefer shoving it, if he is tight as you say then chances are he folds quite a lot of hands and the min raise on button just shouts out weakness.

i disagree with this. often playing poorer players they will min-raise with monsters. if he is tight then you can assume he isnt playing with sh1te either and is lookign for a caller. open shoving is imo terrible as you will so often be behing. you dont even have top pair.
i dont mind the call preflop but you are playing the hand oop so at this stage i dont think its great play. also you got all your chips in with 2nd pair against a three-betting pre-flop raiser this cannot be +ev long run imo.

The Snapper

Thats a nice structured tourney. You have 11600 = less than half the average stack, yet still 14.5 BB's.

Against a tight players min raise oop with a weak hand. The min raise would indicate strength a lot of the time ( what was his raising tendancies to this point ). So a lot of the time you are dominated and oop. Stack size at table, standard of players, is the play tight or aggressive, are factors here too.

If you hit big then you can bet confident your ahead +% of the time and win a big pot. Hit like you did and your not sure were your at even when ahead, so you either win small or lose big.

Fold pf is okay you still have some room to play. As played, if your confident his flop bet is weak, push all in. Putting in half your stack pot commits so you should either fold or push at this point.

PS. You say you had 10k behind going to the flop, yet the bet of 4k left 4k behind ?

Hectorjelly

The Snapper wrote:

If you hit big then you can bet confident your ahead +% of the time and win a big pot. Hit like you did and your not sure were your at even when ahead, so you either win small or lose big.

Have a think about this and see if you still agree with it

The Snapper wrote:

Fold pf is okay you still have some room to play. As played, if your confident his flop bet is weak, push all in. Putting in half your stack pot commits so you should either fold or push at this point.

no

The Snapper

Daragh

I'm on here to learn and dont often respond to posts, simply put, because I have a lot to learn and usually leave it to the more advanced players amongst us. With that in mind I made a stab at this, those were my thoughts on the hand. Feel free point out the flaws in my thinking here.:o

Fold pf is okay you still have some room to play. As played, if your confident his flop bet is weak, push all in. Putting in half your stack pot commits so you should either fold or push at this point.

On this point. Betting half our stack we cant get away from the hand ?

also something I'm beginning to grasp, obviously not entirely. This bet chase's away all but hands we beat ?:(

Hectorjelly

I was just pointing out that what you said was incorrect, we will often end up all in in any number of scenarios. Ahead behind tied etc etc. So we will be likely to play big pots whether we are ahead or not, thats what happens when you have 15 blinds in your stack.

For the second point because no better hand is ever going to fold we dont really want to increase our fold equity, we dont want more hands to fold since the hands we are folding we beat anyway. When he bets 1500 it really makes no difference whatsover for us whether we push or make it 4500 to go since we now have too much invested to fold our middle pair. If betting less induces him to get all the chips in with hands we sometimes beat rather than only ever calling with a jack or better than that is a better situation!

The Snapper

Hectorjelly wrote:

For the second point because no better hand is ever going to fold we dont really want to increase our fold equity, we dont want more hands to fold since the hands we are folding we beat anyway. When he bets 1500 it really makes no difference whatsover for us whether we push or make it 4500 to go since we now have too much invested to fold our middle pair. If betting less induces him to get all the chips in with hands we sometimes beat rather than only ever calling with a jack or better than that is a better situation!

you probably were posting as I edited my reply to include a hint of this point.

At any time even HU should we consider whether or not we give drawing hand's the right price to call. ?

what does a flat call on the flop do for us in this hand , is it an option ?

In general, are your thoughts in any given hand ever towards protecting your hand (ie. the pot is big enough lets just take it down now) or is it simply a case of the most profitable line long term is the correct play.

Hope my rambling makes sense:)

gosplan

Hectorjelly wrote:

Have a think about this and see if you still agree with it

I don't deny your intelligence or the value of your advice.

It really comes back to that posting style. Man, does it make you come across like an arse.

cardshark202

gosplan wrote:

I don't deny your intelligence or the value of your advice.

It really comes back to that posting style. Man, does it make you come across like an arse.

Have a think about what you just said and see if you still believe it.

Hectorjelly

gosplan wrote:

I don't deny your intelligence or the value of your advice.

It really comes back to that posting style. Man, does it make you come across like an arse.

What he said was so clearly incorrect I thought it would be better for him to think it through and come up with the reason why himself.

ianmc38

cardshark202 wrote:

Have a think about what you just said and see if you still believe it.

Lol

therealzuppy

I'm happy enough with my call preflop and would do the same again purely because of pot odds. Ih he raises to 3BB, I fold, no problem. Part of the reason I didn't checkraise all-in was because I think a reraise to a measured amount in these situations shows more strength than an all-in bet. Is this correct though? Should I reraise all in because I think I'm ahead and don't want to be called?

RoundTower

zuppy I think you probably understand pretty well. I would call or fold or reraise preflop, there is nothing wrong with any of them.

cooker3

goodluck2me wrote:

i disagree with this. often playing poorer players they will min-raise with monsters. if he is tight then you can assume he isnt playing with sh1te either and is lookign for a caller. open shoving is imo terrible as you will so often be behing. you dont even have top pair.
i dont mind the call preflop but you are playing the hand oop so at this stage i dont think its great play. also you got all your chips in with 2nd pair against a three-betting pre-flop raiser this cannot be +ev long run imo.

Yeah, you do see people min raise with monsters but I have also seen lots of people do it with nothing. It is player dependant naturally and if you have seen him it do it with monsters then naturally pushing is not a good move but I imo I still think the majority of time it denotes weakness.

Goodluck2me

cooker3 wrote:

Yeah, you do see people min raise with monsters but I have also seen lots of people do it with nothing. It is player dependant naturally and if you have seen him it do it with monsters then naturally pushing is not a good move but I imo I still think the majority of time it denotes weakness.

well if you are playing live you should have notes on your opponent and if you are happy enough that the guy is playing tight, then there is no need to go to war with middle pair against him. you should have a fair enough idea from watching him play as to what he is min-raising with, and this should come into your decision making. As the op said he was tight i presumed that he wasnt going to be playing with muck and so that why i thought that open-pushing that flop was bad play, as he a) is so often ahead and b) will never fold when ahead.
also by open pushing he will often fold when we are ahead which we dont want.i think it was HJ that pointed out that he will often put his chips in behind whne we bet-call, that open push.

also as another point, if we have decided we are going to get our stack in with middle pair here i dont think its the best play to call pf here.

cooker3

goodluck2me wrote:

well if you are playing live you should have notes on your opponent and if you are happy enough that the guy is playing tight, then there is no need to go to war with middle pair against him. you should have a fair enough idea from watching him play as to what he is min-raising with, and this should come into your decision making. As the op said he was tight i presumed that he wasnt going to be playing with muck and so that why i thought that open-pushing that flop was bad play, as he a) is so often ahead and b) will never fold when ahead.
also by open pushing he will often fold when we are ahead which we dont want.i think it was HJ that pointed out that he will often put his chips in behind whne we bet-call, that open push.

also as another point, if we have decided we are going to get our stack in with middle pair here i dont think its the best play to call pf here.

Ah, I think we are getting mixed up. I meant I prefer pushing pre-flop from the bb is my prefered play.